Salford - a city blessed with visionaries

AFTER 17 years of working in Salford, MEN reporter Neal Keeling has witnessed massive changes to the urban landscape, but it is the character of Salfordians that has impressed him. These are his thoughts on Salford.

AFTER 17 years of working in Salford, MEN reporter Neal Keeling has witnessed massive changes to the urban landscape, but it is the character of Salfordians that has impressed him. These are his thoughts on Salford.

In the summer of 1988, I walked through Pendleton for the first time. It was a vision of urban hell. Crumbling, grim, grey maisonettes, on an estate where I would later report about razor wire being laid as a trap for police.

My first glimpse of Salford was from Churchill Way, an area which is now unrecognisable from those days. Town houses with gardens and secure tower blocks stand next to a new road lay-out. They have replaced a landscape of burned-out cars, glass-strewn car parks no one used and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

Another image embossed on my memory is that of a teenage mum cradling a baby in the infamous Brindle Heath flats.

The walk to her third-floor home was through a labyrinth of Legoland ramps and landings, later to be justifiably condemned by experts as one of the most badly-designed estates in the country.

A desolate gloom hung over the place, silent resignation to a woeful way of living - this was not the sixties, but the early nineties. She opened the door and welcomed me in. Her boyfriend had been badly mauled by a dog and I wanted some details. She could not have been more helpful. I left asking myself why such a great "kid" should have to endure such a depressing place.

After more than five years of standing empty like an open sore next to the A6, the flats were demolished.

Bellway Homes built houses on the site. They went up only after a minor spat between rival security companies led to an arson attack when it was still a building site.

But a spot of gangsterism was no hurdle to progress.

Centre

Elsewhere in the city, I witnessed how risk-taking at an inspired level lay foundation stones for the future. In the early nineties, I took notes a the meeting of the city's planning committee as councillors decided to spend é50,000 on a feasibility study for a "waterside arts centre"

One councillor dismissed the idea as a "white elephant". On February 22, 1996, the city hit the National Lottery jackpot and landed the cash to build the é127m centre - which has now been open for five years as The Lowry. Six months earlier, the stunning sailing-boat style é1m Trinity Bridge, designed by Spanish architect, Dr Santiago Calatrava, had been opened.

The footbridge over the Irwell at the time led from Manchester city centre to a barren chunk of land and car park in Salford.

But the graceful landmark was the catalyst that convinced Sir Rocco Forte that the Salford side of the bridge was where he should build Greater Manchester's first five-star hotel.

Salford is a city blessed with visionaries, who saw the potential in the place when it appeared to be on its knees. In 1992, serious civil unrest broke out in several parts of the city, but the media focused, unfairly, on the Ordsall estate, where a fireman dousing the blazing job centre, and a police dog handler, were shot at.

It's reputation, once a by-word for trouble, is now fading, and it has not stopped developer Warren Smith investing millions into the area, creating new affordable apartments.

Behaviour

SALFORD has an edge, as do its people, but that is not a bad thing. At times of tragedy, families have opened their doors and spoken to me when a door slammed in my face would have been acceptable behaviour.

The city's MP, Hazel Blears, published a pamphlet last year, dedicated to the people of Salford. It was called The Politics Of Decency. In it, she reflected: "It is within the collective experience and memory of most working class communities, certainly my own in Salford, that standards of behaviour and decency were once much higher than today."

In a preface to the work Professor Bernard Crick said decency "has nothing to do with not peeing in public. It has everything to do with how we treat others."

Blears says her starting point "is that human beings are capable of being decent, loving, collaborative, and kind."

From 17 years spent walking its streets and talking to people, I can tell you Salford is brimming with human beings like this - it even has politicians like this.

Terry Lewis retired this year as MP for Worsley. He is rough-edged and eloquent - the personification of true Salford.

The stories of two men convinced me of the city's depth of character. In 1998 Thomas "Paddy" Smyth, 74, lost his life savings and virtually everything else in a fire at his home in Great Clowes Street, Higher Broughton. He had not been able to afford insurance.

Plight

In the previous 25 years, he had tended gardens of people near his home, but would never accept payment, just a cup of tea and a sandwich. Neighbours rallied round to help, including local children, who raised é10 washing cars. His plight led to 200 M.E.N. readers offering help, including a man in the US.

An unsung hero from Salford is Edwin Green. He lives in a terraced house in Langworthy. We met in 1999. His wife, Carol, had died from cancer at 44. Her final hours were spent in agony due to "gaps in provision" at Hope Hospital. As a result, the hospital changed its procedures.

Mr Green then campaigned for four years for a special ward for terminally-ill patients at the hospital to open in his wife's memory.

His campaign failed, despite publicity in the M.E.N. But he was undeterred. Instead, he and his family have raised tens of thousands of pounds for St Ann's Hospice at Little Hulton.

Edwin told me how he phoned Salford traffic police and asked if they could give his wife's funeral cortege an escort to Agecroft cemetery. A sympathetic officer explained that would not be possible. Five minutes later, he rang back, and said two motorcycle outriders would do it.